Mathematics is an exciting and beautiful subject! It’s interconnectedness means that each topic you cover will build on and link to numerous previous topics. Aside from the beauty in this, there are also benefits as each topic includes revision on previous topics.
The Maths Faculty at Southborough is built upon its relationships with the students it teaches. Excellent relationships between staff and students enable us to contribute to the school’s key values of aspiration, commitment and excellence. Every student is encouraged to achieve in maths and no student is turned away when help is sought.
Continued achievement and future improvement rests on our ability to develop students’ understanding, application and retention:
It is important that our students understand why they are doing what they do to solve mathematical problems. Teaching should not focus on simply giving a process to blindly follow. Helping students to understand how things work, through use of tactile and visual demonstration, is key (although it is accepted that sometimes the ‘how’ can come before the ‘why’). The focus should be on “depth over breadth”, with students fully understanding the topics they cover, rather than covering a variety of topics and allowing misconceptions to creep in or soon forgetting them.
Students must be given adequate time to apply what they have learnt in a variety of formats. Teachers should not simply move on from a topic when their students can answer 20 simple questions. Students should be challenged with boundary and non-examples, and questions which ask them to unpick or reverse processes to display that they truly understand what they are doing.
A key focus for the Maths Faculty is retention. This can be improved by making students think hard during lesson time, and by building in regular opportunities for retrieval of prior knowledge. Retrieval opportunities will be given during lesson starters, homeworks, weekly low-stakes quizzes and in preparation for study of new topics.
In Years 7 to 11 we split the year group into two bands:
An ‘accelerated’ band, consisting of approximately 60 students (2 classes), who work at a slightly faster pace (although still prioritising depth over breadth) and cover the higher tier topics.A ‘mixed’ band (3 classes) who focus on deep understanding of the foundation tier topics. Students in this band are still eligible to take the higher tier assessments and will be supported by their teachers to do so, provided they show sufficient work ethic and ability to grasp the more complex concepts.
Within each band classes are mixed. Students are assigned bands based on a combination of prior attainment and targets. Students will never be moved down from the accelerated band on the basis of assessment results alone, as we understand that there is a lot more to a student than his assessment results.
Students sit GCSE Statistics (Edexcel) in Year 10 and GCSE Maths (AQA) in Year 11.
Intent, Implementation & Impact
Intent
The intent in Maths is to make a difference to all of our students by enabling them to experience success that generates engagement, motivation and encourages hard work. So that students experience a progressive cycle of improvement and secure a deep understanding of the fundamental concepts and skills whilst working towards fluency.
Implementation
Successfully delivering on our intended outcomes relies on high quality teaching and meaningful learning, so these lie at the heart of what the Maths faculty is and how we do it. We ensure that all students have access to thoroughly planned lessons that are sequenced logically and allow for deep understanding and for opportunities to re-use skills in more and more complex contexts. This approach is informed by a desire to increase the retention in long term memory via frequent applications of the concepts and skills learned in previous months and years.
The faculty’s focus is on its high quality of teaching and therefore high impact on learning. Every aspect of the learning environment is thought through from behaviour for learning, lesson structure, modelling, formative assessment and deliberate practice with opportunities for stretch and challenge. This is so that all pupils will feel safe in every maths classroom and will know how to learn from their mistakes and how to implement feedback received further to end-of-topic tests and cumulative summative assessments.
So as to ensure the success of this environment the curriculum sequencing and lesson planning is research informed and discussed at faculty level to ensure accuracy of explanations, suitable building blocks and appropriateness of tasks to establish the right pace of learning for each student. The Maths faculty is aware this success breeding environment will only work with the full support of the parents and the wider school community.
To complement the efficacy of the classroom learning, the faculty will utilise a cycle of analysis of its summative assessment data to instigate targeted academic support and ensure the efficacy of the Maths Learning Facilitator in their support of small groups of students.
To broaden the efficacy of classroom learning, students will have the opportunity to participate in a range of extracurricular and super-curricular activities that promote a love of mathematics throughout their entire time at school, year 7 to 13.
Impact
The Covid pandemic saw public exams cancelled over the last two years and Centre Assessed Grades awarded - our exam results remain above the national average and, although they dipped a little in 2019, the expectation is that they will return to at least the same as in the previous year.
Moreover the faculty needs to ensure that existing y11 students stay at Southborough High School for their A-Level Maths/Further Maths courses as the recruitment numbers to 6th form have been opposed to the national trend in the numbers of students choosing to study Mathematics at A Level. Already the offer of FSMQ Additional Maths Level 2 is a step in the right direction.
The challenge for 2021-22 is to keep a positive progress for our students despite the possible inflation of previous results and the uncertainties with regards to the exams and the lost learning of the last couple of years for our students.
Curriculum Maps
